Life without Crime as a Fundamental Right of the Child: On the Prevention of Juvenile Delinquency

AuthorIlona Kronberga
Pages74-81
74 JURIDICA INTERNATIONAL 25/2017
Ilona Kronberga
Doctoral student
University of Latvia
Life without Crime
as a Fundamental Right
of the Child:
On the Prevention of Juvenile Delinquency*1
1. Introduction
The understanding of the rights of the child and their meaning dif‌f ers between countries, as does the situa-
tion in the f‌i eld of protection of children’s rights. Very often, contradictory opinions f‌l ourish in society: some
think that children have too many rights, while others recognise violation of the rights of the child even
in cases wherein there is no violation at all. Although professional debate on topical problems, this issue
among them, can be considered a part of diversity of opinion and therefore favourable, extreme opinions or
actions that are based on common law instead of knowledge do not enhance healthy development of society,
of which the children are an integral part. Still, there are several European countries where the rights of the
child are not addressed by a separate branch of law and legal science; therefore, questions pertaining to the
rights of the child fail to be brought into those states’ academic debate and the knowledge of future lawyers
and students of other sciences.
Rights of the child belong to a horizontal branch of law and legal sciences, and, in fact, issues of them
permeate every part of the legal framework and social activity. This is because the rights of the child are the
child’s human rights. These are the rights of a human who grows, develops, learns, and gains life experi-
ence and maturity every day. They are the rights of a human who has not yet reached maturity but is in the
process of personal development. This is what makes a child not a ‘small adult’. Lack of such understanding
sparks heated debate in cases that involve limitations to the rights of the child or, vice versa, the violation
of these rights and appropriate reactions to it. Today, one such area of debate in Latvia surrounds juvenile-
delinquency prevention, responses to of‌f ences committed by children, and attitudes towards child victims
involved in various proceedings of formal justice.
In 2007, analysis of the inf‌l uence of traditional justice on children who are on the line of committing
a crime or have already crossed this border led to the conclusion that it is important to understand that an
of‌f ence committed by a juvenile as socially ‘deformed’ behaviour shows that the rights of this child have
already been violated, earlier in his or her life, and that the child’s interests have been neglected. Lack of
care/consideration, indif‌f erence by parents and other adults, and reluctance to understand and to satisfy
a child’s needs all can lead to the child committing an of‌f ence. The child should be blamed for commission
This publication has been prepared on the basis of conclusions from studies in the f‌i elds of protection of children’s rights
and juvenile-delinquency prevention in Latvia and other European countries over the last six years.
https://doi.org/10.12697/JI.2017.25.08

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